The Snohomish Land Grab: How Original Owners Inflated Prices and Plotted in the Dark

THE CITY OF SNOHOMISH.

A Review of Its Progress During the Past Year.

It is not over yet that people within one mile of the business center of the place. About nine months ago the place was incorporated. At that time, in writing up the town for another publication, I made a personal survey of it and found that there were about 1,000 people residing within a mile of one mile of the business center of the place. The corporate limits cover less than three square miles, and within these limits I found there were 2,098 inhabitants. Within the past year I made a second census, and find that the population has, within the corporate limits, a population of 3,167 people. Within one mile of the business center of the place there are 3,000 inhabitants.

Snohomish presents at the last general election held November 6, 1896, cast 454 ballots. Allowing one ballot to every five inhabitants would make the population of the precinct 2,270; but if count one ballot to every six inhabitants owing to the very large immigration and the number of non-voting new settlers being non-voters, its present population would be 2,724.

Snohomish schools maintain the only graded school in Snohomish County. H. M. Smith is the principal... There are now 21 scholars attending the Institute.

During the past two years the local mill of Blackman Brothers has been unable to furnish lumber as fast as it can be needed to fully supply the demand... Many valuable buildings having been erected that were mainly built in 1896, not including those in this estimate, alone form a total of about $30,000 worth of improvements.

Among the leading causes are the building of the Lake Shore & Eastern Railway from Seattle to this place, and the large immigration from the East. The population is increasing... It is a common complaint that townsite proprietors have been the most active in creating up the price of real estate. On Front Street choice lots are held at $60 per lot. Business lots range from $15 to $30 per lot, depending on location. Residence lots worth the year ago $150 now for $300 per lot.

Many complain that, as a whole, the townsite proprietors have made an extortion of real estate than other people the exact valuation... It is a common complaint that developers only print one side and that the bad title is never written up. Here the attempt is made to write up both sides, good and bad.

A very serious question now faces this community in the informal way the early townsite proprietors made out and sold their town. Ferragamo and their plat of Snohomish City Western Part... Most of these lots are on the M. M. survey... Prior to 1894 none of these surveys were made of record and the location of none of the lands platted could be ascertained by the recorded maps. Against the original holders the present owners could doubtless hold their property, could they find it other than recorded evidence; but even this is so contested that men may well hereafter have to adjudicated entirely from their lots on to some one else's land.

Now what title the railroad company acquired to its property here by admission of certain instruments in the law. I do not claim that any fraud has been intended... but now, when errors show a danger to title, they may be proved such as may be repaired before it is too late for the interests of all.

For the interests of all Snohomish has been the same cause that ever found this place valuable and true to settlement. When railroad communication was proposed between the two points... everyone here knew there would be a boom... Old settlers, engineers, etc., were at a loss. They describe the winter freshets... Neither the present nor former bridge allows any chance for the big drift to pass by. As soon as this river seems to be in the summer time there are no rivers in the United States where floating drift is more of an engineering difficulty... Should such bridges stand, they would certainly dam up the river with drift, create a new channel and drown out the nation-laid sewers above here.